Thursday, January 7, 2016

Watching the EPL Live ... Or More Often Not

I enjoyed the rare luxury of
watching a chunk of the last round of English Premier League matches before the
New Year, as I had time off work and temporary access to the Fox Sports
channel. My viewing started with the Manchester United v Chelsea match early on
the Tuesday morning [Australian Eastern Standard Time], continued on for three
more matches on replay, and then finished off with the Leicester v Manchester
City and Sunderland v Liverpool matches. (Alas, due to a few low scoring
matches, I saw only one goal ‘live’.)

My EPL ‘binge’ raised what I
thought was an interesting point about watching EPL matches – you can see
relatively few matches in or close to their entirety as they happen. Generally over half of
an EPL round is played at the same time on a Saturday afternoon [UK time]. I
purposefully did not check the scores of the matches that were being replayed
before I watched them, but the fact remains that they had already happened; the
result was not in doubt as I was watching.

Personally I find it kind of
cool and somewhat quaint that many of the EPL matches are still played all over
the country at the same time. When I first started watching Australian Rules football
most of the Victorian Football League matches occurred on a Saturday afternoon
as well. It was exciting to be at a match and see the progress scores on the
scoreboard, or listen to the radio and go around the grounds. The
last Saturday afternoon of the 1987 VFL home and away season, when
every match was close and had an impact on the finishing order for the finals,
still stands as one of my all-time favourite sporting days. The EPL sometimes
has that sort of excitement when the title is up for grabs on the last match
day.

America’s National Football
League has a similar schedule to the EPL. Most of the matches are played in two
blocks; the first on Sunday afternoon [American Eastern Standard Time], and the
second on Sunday evening. Again then, it is not possible to watch a lot of
matches in or close to their entirety as they happen. A side effect of this is that the
matches that do not occur within these two blocks take on extra significance,
namely the Monday night and Thursday night matches in the NFL, and the early
Saturday afternoon and Sunday and Monday matches in the EPL. For me this
significance does not even come from these being the only live matches for the
day, since I can usually only catch the highlights for these matches.
Nevertheless I almost always watch the highlights for the ‘off-match/game day’
bouts.

Down in Australia of course
the schedules for the two main football leagues – the Australian Football
League (the former VFL) and the National Rugby League – have become stretched
out over the weekend so TV viewers can watch as many live matches as possible. This
may have also been done so that, if you regularly worked on a Saturday
afternoon, you would not miss all of your club’s matches. If your preference is
to sit on the couch all weekend watching match after match, which personally I
do not do except during the finals, then you probably really like this type of
schedule. At the least it means you can watch a lot of matches live if you want
to.

The other major American
sports leagues aside from the NFL have so many games that surely few people
would want to sit through all of them. Nevertheless you can watch a lot of
games live if you want to, although not in their entirety, due to the time
difference between the East Coast and West Coast games and to some extent the
Central games as well. In the case of the National Basketball Association
currently only my desire not to spend my whole day on the weekend watching
basketball prevents me from starting my viewing at 11.00am [Australian Eastern
Standard Time] and ending at 5.00pm, although we will see if that still holds
once the playoffs begin.

Anyway, the point of all
this is just to muse on the different approaches to scheduling, and how they
affect your experience of following a sport. As I said, I sort of long for the
days that most of the Australian Rules matches were played on a Saturday
afternoon. I enjoyed my EPL ‘binge’ because it was a rarity, not because I
would want to do it every week. Plus, given the time differences, on some days
I would prefer to sleep.